Blooming
by jennalouisecoleman
Summary: AU. Clara Oswald, wife to John Smith and a walking calamity, is living a lie. Every aspect of her life is falling apart - but why is it only Coal Hill's lonely caretaker can see it?
1. Chapter 1

She couldn't work out what they reminded her of.

Flowers, perhaps; a bed of blooming flowers with slightly discoloured petals, lumpy and rather misshapen, strewn almost haphazardly across crumbly soil. Or maybe it was a cloudy sky, in the late evening, with burnt colours streaking behind dark smudges as far as the eye could see. Or was it a craggy face of cliff, rough and broken around the edges, that remained strong and motionless as rocks crashed down it, cold and destructive and unstoppable?

She didn't think it was any of those.

She saw beauty in all of those things, and if there was one thing she was certain of in the maelstrom of indecipherable thoughts and feelings that clouded her mind - and, it would now seem, her pathetic judgement - it was that there was no beauty in them. And she was not going to pretend for a second there was. Clara had spent enough of her life pretending to herself, to everyone else, hiding things and ignoring them and making vain attempts to smother her ever-present fear.

He never used to be this way. He was clumsy and shy and slightly awkward, always fumbling over things and shooting her quick, lopsided smiles, never managing to hold eye contact with her for longer than a few seconds before glancing away and fiddling with his hands. His shyness was one of the very first things Clara found so compelling. She wanted to know all about him, she wanted him to put his trust in her and she wanted to watch him unravel and unfurl as if falling apart, not to break, but to share everything about him with her. He was handsome, there was no doubt about that, with his floppy dark hair and his enigmatic green eyes, which seemed too old for his mere thirty years, but she wanted to actually _know_ him _._

As it happened, the only thing that fell apart in the end was her. And she most definitely broke.

He was gone, by this point in the morning. It was still early, but he had a habit of leaving early nowadays, and she wasn't about to change that. The sunlight streaming in through the curtains and the fuzzy red numbers on her alarm clock told her that she really needed to get up, otherwise she'd be late for work and get in trouble and then he would find out and then God knows what he'd do to her, but he would be angry, and demand answers she didn't have, and then it would start all over again. Not that it ever really stopped.

Gently rubbing her heavy eyelids, Clara propped herself up on her elbows, and a low hiss escaped from between her lips as twinges of pain ran through her body. She was aching all over, and she was terrified she was showing marks in places she wouldn't be able to cover. As she struggled to sit upright, drawing her legs close to her body, she lightly ran her index finger down the side of her face and neck. She couldn't feel anything obvious there, but she'd have to check in the mirror when she finally made herself look. She didn't think there would be, though. He was too clever for that.

She hated the mirror. He'd bought it for her when she moved in, a good four years ago now, and it was a beautiful thing - a full length, stand-alone mirror, framed with intricate silver carvings that curled around its edges. She used to polish its surface every weekend, to prevent dust and grime collecting on it, and the image she saw reflected back would be sharp and real and beautiful. When it started, she refused to clean it for weeks, and the image started to blur around the edges. She liked it better that way.

She tossed the crumpled covers off of her, taking care not to look at any part of herself as she did so. She'd let herself look for too long already this morning. Slowly, with great care, she eased herself off the bed, screwing her eyes tightly shut against the pain, before padding across the room to the mirror.

Somehow, even now, she always managed to feel shocked every time she saw the dark contusions littering her pale skin. They were so bold and contrasting and ever-present that she felt, as she always did for one overwhelming moment, that she would never be free of them.

They weren't that bad, today. The bruises along her left upper arm, that creeped down into the crook of her elbow, were the worst - but those were the ones she had been looking at earlier, so she'd had time to get a little more used to them. She gently shrugged her arms out of the thin straps of the short cotton nightgown she was wearing, the one he liked her in, and let it slide to the floor, watching helplessly as they all emerged from behind the thin fabric. The ones from her upper arm continued up, too - they curved around her shoulder and down, across her chest, and down her side until her hip. Clara ran her cold fingers softly over the purple, mottled skin, and the tender swellings ached under her touch. There were a few new marks on top of the yellowing skin on the outsides of her thighs, just under her hips, from where he'd grasped her legs tightly and didn't even bother asking the question. It wouldn't have mattered if he had. She wouldn't have been able to say no.

Her thoughts were suddenly catapulted back to a different time, one she found she was coming back to more and more recently. It was dangerous, she knew, but like an addict in search of their next fix, she couldn't help herself.

She remembered their first time - he had taken her out for dinner, and he had ordered fish fingers. It was a very, very fancy restaurant, only a few weeks old, and yet he didn't seem ashamed of his odd choice - or even, it seemed, believe it was odd at all. It was their second date. (He'd taken her out bowling the first time - it was cliché, she knew, but she'd loved it. He was extremely competitive, she noticed, and it took all of her strength to refrain from smirking every time his features twisted with concentration, his tongue slipping out the corner of his mouth. He had been in such a hurry to start the game, such a hurry to impress her, that he misspelled his name on the board, and she couldn't help but laugh a little whenever "Juhn" popped up on the flickering screen: not because it was particularly funny, but because he didn't notice even once, not for the whole evening.) He ordered his dessert halfway through his meal, and Clara had sat there, astonished, as he surreptitiously dipped his last two fish fingers into the custard of his pudding, and ate them. He looked up at her, his knowing green eyes suddenly wide and innocent, with a dribble of custard making its way down his chin and onto his deep blue tie, and all of a sudden she felt huge surge of love, followed by a burning desire, a desperate _need_ , to be physically close to him, to have all of him right there with all of her. She couldn't get him home quick enough.

She remembered how he led her upstairs, his fingers locked with hers and his thumb gently caressing her knuckles, placing his hand on the small of her back as they crossed the threshold; how he placed fervent kisses along her jawbone and down her neck, along her collarbone, stopping before he reached her breasts; his hands tracing circles on her thighs and holding her around her waist; her slim fingers deftly undoing his tie as he fumbled to get her out of her red dress; then, afterwards, feeling him smile against her lips as she lay down next to him, exhausted yet so very content, gathered into his arms and filled completely with a happiness so pure she hadn't thought it could even exist.

Tears begun sliding down her cheeks before she had a chance to comprehend her loss. He never used to be this way. Clara was sure. She kept repeating it to herself, again and again and again as she started going through her daily rituals: ointment, cream, oil, primer, foundation, concealer, long sleeves, thick tights, loose jumpers. He paid for all her creams, all her makeup. She used so much of the stuff, and every fortnight or so she would return home to find shiny new bottles sitting quietly on the countertop. He never said a word about it, and she never asked.

 _He never used to be this way._ Is anyone born a bad person? Is there even such thing? Clara had no answers. Nobody really did. He was so kind when they'd met, so loving and shy and always doing whatever he could to please anyone he could. And then one day...

She froze, and squeezed her eyes shut, tugging a cardigan over her spotty dress. It didn't bear thinking about. She was late, she had so much to do, and she knew if she went down that path she wouldn't come back. Not for a very long time.

Instead, she glanced into the mirror one last time, practiced smiling a few times and making sure every one reached her eyes, then turned her back and walked quickly away, the door clicking quietly shut behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

As she approached the school, Clara felt her phone buzz in her pocket, three short, sharp vibrations that sent tremors through her body. She gripped her fingers so tightly around the steering wheel of her car her knuckles blanched, and she could feel her heartbeat thrumming in her fingertips. It buzzed a second time, and then once more, persistent and angry and demanding, and she felt fear's icy hand grip her insides tightly, squeezing her so hard she couldn't breathe. She turned sharply into her regular parking spot, a few metres away from the front entrance of Coal Hill, and braked hard. Her firm grip on the steering wheel failed to loosen, and she felt a lump rising in her throat as she struggled to control her erratic breathing. She stumbled out of her car and shoved the doors of the main entrance of the school open, stumbling along the bleak corridors and blindly pushing open the first familiar door she saw - the door to the store cupboard.

Resting her head against the hard wood shelves, Clara fumbled in her pocket for her phone, closing her fingers around it and drawing it slowly up to her eye line.

It was him, of course; that fact hadn't changed since she'd felt those harsh vibrations in the pocket of her dress only minutes ago, and seeing his name flashing up on his screen sent her over the edge. Her fingers clumsily tapped out the simple passcode he'd helped her choose when he bought her the phone - she had to enter it twice, she was shaking so much - and stared at the small screen in front of her.

 _Sorry I missed you this morning, Clara._

 _Do you have everything you need to make for dinner tonight? I quite fancy a roast._

 _Oh - I will be back around nine. I have to work late._

His curt words stung her. She'd had to teach herself to believe in remaining honest with herself (Clara wouldn't go as far as saying she trusted herself) - she was the only person she had to confide in, now. But the one time she made an exception to this rule was at times like this; times when she had to make herself believe she was used to it, that it didn't bother her, that it didn't hurt her more than any physical encounter with him ever did. It was times like this that broke her heart, because nothing else illustrated quite so fully the extent to which she had well and truly lost him.

Once the tears started, they couldn't stop. It wasn't an easy thing to comprehend, loss. When she lost her mother, the grief was an unbearable continuum of soft tears and fierce denial, and a smothering sense of endlessness that failed to let up. When she buried her mother, she buried a part of herself under all that cold earth with her, and it was only then she slowly started to accept it all.

It was different when she lost him. It was a slow, gradual process, one during which she was blinded and desperate and then, one day, she saw that her marriage had unravelled completely, and she had tried and tried to patch it back up but all she had done was begin a new tapestry with the shreds of her old life, pretend she was apart from it all and pray that one day she would be.

Her hand stifling the weak cry escaping her lips, Clara slumped helplessly against the shelves, every inch of fight she had left sapped from her aching body.

And then she heard the door click open.

Stiffening up instantly, she rubbed angrily at her sore eyes, blinked twice, smiled briefly to herself just to make sure she could still do it, and was about to turn slowly around to greet the incomer when a gruff brogue interrupted her from a little way behind.

"Is it a man? Or a woman?"

Clara whipped her head round so quickly the muscles in her neck pulled and protested against the action, her eyes wide and her eyebrows knitted together in a deep frown as she shoved her phone violently into the pocket of her dress, scooping up a pile of gaudy yellow exercise books from the shelf in front of her to give herself a reason to be there.

"Excuse me?" Her tone was puzzled.

"You heard," he said simply. "Is it a man, or is it a woman who's doing it? I'm assuming it's your partner, but there's still more to narrow down."

She stared at him.

"Well?" He stared back at her, his gaze merely questioning, hers starting to fill with an odd, afraid clarity.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Clara managed. Her voice shook slightly and she twisted her trembling hands together behind her back. "You're not making any sense."

The expression in his dusty blue eyes changed a fraction. She recognised a curious amalgamation of emotions flickering across them: pity, exasperation, sadness, anger, and guilt, almost - and another, unreadable one, that made her heart pound hard against her chest. His eyes wandered down her body, satisfied, almost - as if he was looking for something, and had found it there - and she instinctively pulled all her hems down, wrapping her cardigan tight around her body, her sleeves tickling her fingertips, and her hand reaching round to tug her dress down further over her black tights.

There was a short, heavy silence. Clara felt unsteady, as if she were balanced precariously on the edge of a crumbling precipice and didn't know whether she could stop herself tumbling head-first over the edge.

He smiled at her then, but it was a small, sad smile, that to Clara, for a reason she didn't understand but one that made the core of her very being ache, looked a lot like giving up.

"I should let you get on, then," he said softly, this gentle tone a harsh contrast to his deep, gravelly Scottish brogue. He nodded towards the stack of crisp yellow exercise books in her arms. "You've probably got a lot to be getting on with."

Clara was finding it strangely hard to concentrate, not least begin forming a coherent thought or response in her head. Her pulse was rapid and relentless, and she was beginning to feel a little light-headed as a result of her shallow, unsettled breathing. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and she took a deep breath before looking him dead in the eye and smiling widely.

"As a matter of fact," she began, "I do. I'm sorry, sir -" The corner of his mouth lifted a fraction as he interrupted her.

"Doctor."

"- I'm sorry, _Doctor..._ wait - Doctor _who_?"

He was definitely smiling now.

"Just Doctor is fine, thank you, Miss Oswald."

Clara opened her mouth a fraction, her smile faltering for a moment, before shaking her head slightly and plastering it back on her face.

"Well, Doctor, I'm sorry about this... _misunderstanding_ , but I really must be getting on - I don't wish to keep you any longer! Have an enjoyable day - and, once again, please accept my profuse apologises for this confusion - as I really have no answers to these questions, and am sure they aren't supposed to be directed to me - and my delaying you. Oh, and please - call me Clara."

And there was that smile again. That sad, sad smile, those two conflicting emotions that just looked so wrong together, so very, very _wrong_ , like watching a wildfire creep along a wood, consuming everything in its path, and she was almost entranced by it. The beauty of the two on their own - albeit one was a dark, twisted beauty - and then them colliding was a thing so hypnotic and dazzling it could've been a wonder of the universe.

Or maybe she was thinking of his eyes.

"It's no problem, Clara," he said softly. "It's no problem at all."

Her smile still fixed determinedly on her face, she gathered the exercise books closer to her chest, hitching her brown satchel up her shoulder, and backed hurriedly out of the room, the door swinging and creaking a little in her wake.

It wasn't until they began spilling down her cheeks, spattering lightly onto the cover of an exercise book, that Clara realised she'd even been close to tears in the first place. She collapsed into the wide black chair in her classroom, shrinking into the brightly patterned cushions, and drew her trembling hands up to her face.

He knew.

Her heart was beating so hard against her chest she could hear it, and she felt sicker and sicker with every dull thud.

He _knew_.

But how could he possibly know? Clara's mind felt thick and foggy, her limbs felt heavy and her eyes were burning in her attempt to repress her tears.

 _"Is it a man? Or a woman?"_

 _"I'm assuming it's your partner..."_

 _"Is it a man, or is it a woman who's doing it?"_

She felt dizzy, her thoughts whirling relentlessly round and round in circles as she tried desperately to make sense of the encounter. He'd seen her lose control. Logic all of a sudden meant nothing: logically, he couldn't have been talking about anything but the truth. But, _logically_ , he couldn't have known about it in the first place.

Maybe he knew John? Her blood ran cold. If he knew John, she was not safe. Coal Hill was her sanctuary. Her job was one of the only things she had left, now - she couldn't give it up. She wouldn't. But, somehow, she was certain she was wrong on this count. The idea just didn't fit. He was too gentle, and his curiosity, as it were, seemed genuine.

But then who was she to say? Since when had she been an accurate judge of character? The position she was in now was nothing but proof of her pathetic weakness, and poor judgement. Her life was a tumbling mess of losses and poor decisions, and she was certain that wasn't about to change any time soon - if ever.

She just needed to stay away from him. She barely even knew him. Kneading her temples with her trembling fingers, Clara decided that the best thing to do now - the only thing she _could_ do, if she was being honest with herself - was to stay well away from that man.


End file.
